


Ephesus

by mashallah



Category: Christian Bible (New Testament)
Genre: Gen, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-16
Updated: 2016-05-16
Packaged: 2018-06-08 21:59:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6875284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mashallah/pseuds/mashallah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What was the Apostle John doing the day before he wrote the Gospel?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ephesus

**Author's Note:**

> _"But mother," said Isaac, "if we were not God's  
>  chosen people, what then should we be? I am afraid  
> of being nothing." And Sarah laughed._
> 
>  -Eleanor Wilner, "Sarah's Choice"

After all these years, he knows only this: God has no beginning, no end. He is limitless; he is like the air. He is like the sky—no, greater. He is a note of silence that will not end.

(He is beyond time; he is the thing that lives behind it. Up there. Look. _Look_.)

These are the things that John has said before. He has stood on the beach two miles from Ephesus and pointed to the waves, to the sky. He’s held up a handful of sand to demonstrate the things that God knows. He’s broken open a conch shell to show the intricacies that only God can create. He’s pulled fragments from his memory— _the kingdom of God is like this. No, it is like this._ _Also, like this_. He’s told all these things to followers and curious onlookers—some more interested than others, some inquisitive and others bored, some hostile because they were brought there by someone else. Sometimes the disenchanted grow animated; sometimes the followers go blank. People are always unpredictable.

People are always treacherous _._

Today, though, there is no treachery. He is alone. He is not speaking to anyone. The beach is glorious and empty, and the sun hasn’t even come up yet. He’s slipped away from his house, from his two disciples, from the one who calls him father and the one who calls him lord. They’ll be awake soon and disturbed to find him gone. They’ll look for him. They will go to his room and see his bed is empty; they will look to one another to know what to do. The one will want to search the streets; the other will say, “Let’s wait to see if he comes back.” And the first will say, “But we don’t know how long he’s been gone. What if he left hours ago?” And the other will reply, “Then we need to stay because he will be returning soon.”

At the shore near Ephesus the water is blue and the beach is wide and white. It is not unlike Galilee, but it is not quite the same either. He has tried before to close his eyes and force a connection; sometimes he succeeds, but mostly he fails. On a day like today the lake at Galilee was calm and still. It was like a surface that one could skim or touch. Ephesus has the sea; it smells of salt and ocean air and the wider unknown. There could be something on the other side, something you would never understand—a city or a person or another world.

He stoops over near the shoreline, touches the sand and watches a clam burrow back into the receding surf. He is glad no one is here to watch him do this. Not that it would matter. When you are a very old man or a very young child, you can get away with things that no one else can: you can talk to yourself. You can sleep in public. You can watch clams play in the surf. You can walk alone before sunrise to be alone with your thoughts, even though everyone knows that it’s the worst time to get beaten or robbed or even killed.

Papias and Polycarp will fret. They’ll be terrified that he’s gone off alone, and they’ll wonder if he’s lost his mind. (These days, they are concerned that he’s lost his mind. He knows this, even as they have made a point to conceal their anxieties from him.)

 _People are always treacherous_.

He didn’t say that. He didn’t say it—it wasn’t him. It was said _to_ him. He remembers now that James gave him those words. He was trying to comfort John, to say that people are predictable in their treachery _._ As in: it’s a given. As in: it is the order of the day. As in: you will get hurt no matter what, so be sure about the thing you are meant to be about.

They were sitting in the middle of John’s house in Jerusalem when James said that, and he said it so evenly, so calmly, that it seemed to resonate through the house. James was resigned.

They had a fight then, a fight that John would always have to carry with him. Because James died right after that.

He knows why he comes here: to be alone on a sea that couldn’t really be mistaken for Galilee, and to be alone in a body that aches for his first home. Even after all these years, James’s words, death, and home—all these things—don’t depart from him. Even now he looks at the surf, says out loud, just to himself, “You are dead. And you are dead.”

He repeats these words sometimes when he’s passing by some tombs, or a slaughter house. _You are dead, and dead, and I am alive_. _I am alive_. But there is a lack of distinction there, and sometimes it troubles him. Maybe the lack lies not within the world but within him. He wishes to undo the difference. He doesn’t want the mystery of dead or alive.  

***

The dead are still dead, but Polycarp and Papias are awake and anxious. He sees them standing in the doorway of their house. Polycarp takes a hand from his brow. Papias stands there, his eyes fixed on John, his expression impassive. In Papias’s world, no one stays for very long. Papias: the boy John saved from certain death, from forced drowning when his master caught him stealing and dragged him into the sea. That was a few years ago. Papias is different now, but he is also the same. He is always the slave who was almost drowned fifty yards from the shore of Patmos. When he looks at John, John knows that he’s merely trying to size up the situation. He knows that Papias believes that his new master is not as permanent as he seems. Maybe he will eventually lose his kind demeanor and become just like everyone else. Or maybe he will be taken away by people who are just like everyone else.  

Polycarp is a different matter altogether—he is trusting. He was brought up in a large Ephesian family, educated. Four sisters, two brothers, two parents, a collection of aunts and uncles and cousins. When he decided to follow John in the short span of time right before the persecution began, his family grew angry. And then they grew fearful. They begged Polycarp to abandon this new form of fanaticism. He did not. The persecution took hold in the city; young Polycarp still did not go home. Even as their friends were taken away in the night, or sometimes during the day, Polycarp stayed near John, praying with him in the morning and fasting in the afternoon. He fastened his clothes for him, brought him his shoes. He fetched water for the other church leaders in the city, listening to their hurried and anxious speech, their arguments with each other as they decided what to do, how to proceed. John was left outside of these conversations—a thing that he understood, even as it baffled him. He was the old man now, the elder who had walked with Jesus, but perhaps too old a man to run a church. These men wanted to save themselves; they knew that John would only hasten their end. “And he is full of miracles,” one of them said when he thought John was not around. “We are not.”

One of the church leaders was killed and pinned with a sword to entrance of the Temple of Diana. Another was hung from the city wall. Polycarp watched the rest of the men grow frightened. They faded back into the city streets, mingling once again with the local populations, paying tribute to Diana as though they had never done anything else. “There is too much news,” Polycarp reported one night to John when they were alone in John’s house, “so they have gone now.” News: their word for death. Gone: desertion, maybe exile. Polycarp rarely spoke many words at all, but it was clear he understood the stakes. _He is too young_ , John thought then. He half suspected—half hoped—that Polycarp might go back to his family, and he decided in advance that he would neither encourage nor discourage him in doing so.

And then one day, the news came to them. Soldiers tracked John to where he was staying—the house of a middle-aged Ephesian Jew named Simeon. Simeon had already sent his family away to the mountains. When the soldiers entered the house, Simeon didn’t even rise from the table. He also didn’t glance in the direction of the other room where John sat with Polycarp, waiting. John glimpsed the exchange through gauzy curtains. The soldiers’ large shoulders cut like shadows in an empty room.

“Where is he?” a soldier asked in stilted Greek.

“Who?” Simeon said, still not getting up from his table. Not flinching at the size of the men who now occupied his atrium.

“You know,” said the one soldier, and the other said, “The old Jew.” And the first said: “We’ve been told this house. Don’t worry, he won’t be hurt. We were sent to bring him to Rome.”

John could tell from their accents that these soldiers weren’t Roman or Greek. They were hired men, men culled from the northernmost regions of the empire. Feared as the most brutal and lawless of Rome’s soldiers, they had little to gain except whatever perverse pleasure their work brought them.

Simeon rose from the table, held up his hands. “I am he. I am the old Jew you seek.”

Before John could act—before he could walk through the curtain to hand himself to them—a soldier took his sword and drove it into Simeon’s neck. Simeon’s arms flew up and he made a noise that sounded like a terrible cough. Then he collapsed sideways, his blood streaking his clothes and then staining the floor, unfurling from him like a cloak. His legs twitched three times, and then he was still. Dead and then dead.

Beside him in the bedroom, Polycarp clasped one hand over his open mouth, a noiseless scream. John reached for him. But then the soldiers were there. One clapped his fist against Polycarp’s side. Polycarp made a sharp noise, doubled over. John found himself pressed against the wall, a soldier’s elbow pinning him by the neck. When he managed to gather his thoughts, he glanced behind him. Polycarp was on the ground, his hands tied. A soldier was on top of him, his knee pressed into Polycarp’s back.

Face down on the floor, Polycarp didn’t make any noise other than the quick gasps of shuddering breath. And then his breathing turned to a slow and labored wheeze, and John knew that he was going to die.

The soldier pressed harder, levering his weight against Polycarp’s back. He was going to try to break Polycarp’s back like this—snap him in two.

“Let him up,” John said, his right cheek still pressed against the wall. He couldn’t see anything. He felt only the soldier’s hands against him. His neck stiffened.

The soldier holding him said something John couldn’t identify. Then he pulled John’s head back and slammed him once more into the wall.

John was stunned; pain bloomed behind his eyes. He shook himself to awareness and turned his head once more. “Let him up,” he said again, this time more forcefully. He no longer struggled against the soldier’s grip. “Let him _up.”_ Immediate the soldier’s touch lightened. John eased himself away from the wall as if peeling his body from sleep.

Polycarp lay face down on the ground, his breathing turned to a rasp. The soldier was still hovering on top of him, his knee at Polycarp’s back but now not pressing down as hard. John motioned to the soldier. The soldier obeyed. Then he stood back.

Polycarp’s breathing became a sound that John recognized—a sound he dreaded. He lowered himself to where Polycarp lay and untied him before turning him over. The boy had lost consciousness, and his breath no longer came in quick gasps. His face was white and his lips so dry they had disappeared into the paleness of skin. “Child,” John whispered. Polycarp was so still. _How still the dead_.

The two soldiers hadn’t yet moved. John looked up at them. Gestured to the one who stood closer to him. “Water. Get the jug of water in the other room.”

The first soldier blinked once, and then his eyes widened. Immediately he turned to obey, going to fetch the jug. By the time he had returned with the jug, Polycarp was breathing again.

The soldier poured water into a small cup and knelt next to John. “Here,” he whispered, handing the cup to John.

If John had been paying closer attention, he would have seen the looks the soldiers gave one another, their gentle hesitation, their awe. They were, he knew, not in awe of him but of each other—of the situation. Why were they deferring to this small Jew who’d been summoned like a common criminal? What magic did he possess; what spell did he cast on them?

John rubbed the boy’s arm. Then he tapped his forehead. Polycarp awoke with a start, sat up. John handed him the cup and told him to drink.

In minutes he had the boy on his feet. The soldiers stood and watched, and neither of them said anything.

“You’ll go,” John said. He reached for the boy’s cloak, fastened it around him.

Polycarp stared at John without seeing, unwilling or unable to process what was happening. He allowed the older man to dress him, to fasten his brooch.

“You’ll take yourself out of here,” John said slowly. “You’ll return to your home. You won’t run. You’ll walk.” He grasped the boy’s arms. “Do you understand what I’ve told you?”

Polycarp came back to himself. He looked down at John and grasped his hand. “Father,” he said, his breath catching.

“Go now.” John placed on hand on Polycarp’s shoulder and nudged him away.

Polycarp loosened his grip on John’s hand. He turned and left the room. Seconds later he was gone.

But he wasn’t gone altogether. After the soldiers had bound John with a rope and one chain and led him from the house, John passed into the sunlight and saw Polycarp standing fifty yards away at the top the street’s slight incline. People walked by on either side of him, none of them interested in the scene as it occurred—not the soldiers taking a slight old man from a house in mid daylight, nor the boy weeping in the street. Polycarp did not raise his hand or use his voice. He stared at John, his hands by his side and just cried. _Father_ , he’d said. He already had a father—an earthly father who had raised him, paid for his schooling, and provided for his needs.

Polycarp locked eyes with John once more and then lowered his face, burying it in his hands. John believed that he’d never see the boy again.

But now Polycarp stands in front of him—older now, a man in Ephesus, but still young. He maintains ties to his family, a thing John knows even as Polycarp seems to want to conceal it from him. Just as Papias still leaves cakes at a shrine for the goddess Hecate, convinced that doing so will keep them safe from poisoning. (He has heard that someone tried to poison John.) These are good children, John thinks, but Greek to their fingertips. They have not completely put to rest their old habits. Fifty years ago—nay, forty—such a thing would have unsettled him—not _horrified_ him, just unsettled him. He remembers saying to Simon, “How can Saul be so careless? These people eat what they’ve scarified to idols. They confuse Jesus with their Zeus, their Ares. How can we let this happen?” But it was happening; it had already happened. And now he lives in a house on the outskirts of Ephesus with two imperfectly converted men—two young men barely older than he and his brother were when Jesus found them.    

He approaches Papias and Polycarp in the doorway. They don’t say anything, but words pass between the three of them nonetheless. From Papias and Polycarp, admonishments and questions. From John, mere annoyance. _Can’t you see I’m capable enough? I’m not through with you yet_. But at the base of his spine there is an ache. Yes, he has outdone himself already. It’s not six in the morning and he’s too tired to go on. He’s an old man in need of a bed.

“Master,” begins Papias, and Polycarp silences him with a cutting glance.

Then Polycarp looks at him and says: “We waited prayer for you.” 

“Waited _prayer_ for me?” John says. He steps up to the doorway, and though he’s not as tall as the two young men, he feels as though he looms over them. Polycarp moves aside immediately and Papias seems to fold in on himself, his arms crossed over his chest. “You know that prayer need not wait for anyone.”

“We waited _breakfast_ ,” Polycarp amends, knowing that John insists that they pray before they eat.

John pauses in the threshold and touches Polycarp softly on the arm. He understands he’s been a worry. This time his words are less harsh: “You know you needn’t wait on that, either.” He steps into the small edifice, the tile solid but soft against his sandals, so unlike the shifting sand of the beach or the unforgiving stones of the main road. Noiselessly he whispers the _Sh‘ma_ , lowers himself to the stool inside the doorway where he can wash the dirt from his feet. Polycarp comes forward to help. John doesn’t always accept his help, but this time he lets Polycarp do what he wants.

He makes his way to the hearth where there is a plate with some bread and olives. Papias and Polycarp join him. They all stretch out their hands and pray together. John blesses the food in a language the boys don’t know—in a language he barely hears spoken anymore, except in his dreams. And then they eat the small offering.

“Artemia comes today,” Papias tells him. “In the morning. And later Nikos. He brings the others.” 

“Theron from Smyrna in the afternoon,” Polycarp says. “Maybe. He sent word ahead, telling us he would be here.”

“The road from Smyrna is sometimes not so easy,” John says. “Hopefully he will not meet with any delay.”

Theron is bishop in Smyrna, but he was not appointed by John. Correspondence from him has been unpredictable, sometimes fraught. There are issues in the church in Smyrna, turbulence. And though John says nothing to anyone about this, he knows that Theron is not the right person to lead such a fragile group.

He decides not to think about it. Not right now. He steadies himself for a second, his hand pressed against the ground. Then he slowly pushes himself to his feet.

Papias and Polycarp are caught off guard. Still eating, they watch as John rises, their faces tilting to look up at him. Papias begins to stand and Polycarp sets his food down so that he might also stand.

“No, no,” John tells them, holding up his hand. “Don’t let me interrupt your breakfast. I’m just going back to bed.” He pretends not to notice the boys exchanging their looks again. “I’m an old man who awoke too early this morning and went for a walk. I should not have done that. The walk, I mean.”

Polycarp turns back to his plate—to conceal a look of concern, John guesses.

Papias stands next to him. “I will help you.”

John touches Papias’s arm. “You’ll see to Artemia when she arrives, that’s what you will do.”

In the small room he calls his own, he disrobes and hangs his cloak on a hook that protrudes from the far wall. Then he lowers himself onto his cot. This is where he sleeps without really sleeping. He knows that the old never sleep well despite their exhaustion and relative patience with the world. Still, he wishes that sleep would come for him now before it gets too warm and before the city streets grow too crowded and noisy. John’s eyesight has dimmed slightly in recent years, but his hearing is still sharp.

They live on the city’s south side, reasonably shielded from the clamor and constant pant of the market district. But by the late morning there is shouting; there is the rattle of carts and the singing of passersby. They inherited the house from Drusiana, who knew John from before, and who welcomed him back when he was released from his exile. The house is something of a meeting place and a makeshift inn for other believers—it’s rare that only the three of them are alone for more than a few days. Artemia will be there soon, and John will be glad to see her. It is good, he thinks, to have women around, to hear the whisper of their sandals against the floor, so unlike the impatient slap-slap that all young men seem to make. It reminds him of the days when he used to be closer to women, living under the same roof as the lord’s mother and visited often by Mary Magdalen. Mary Magdalen—he’s still cautious with his memories of her. If he thinks about her briefly, he feels a certain melancholy, but one that extends naturally from the memory of their brief time together. If he dwells on her, he has to acknowledge the scope of his regret. There is pain. There is sadness. It’s why he doesn’t talk about her very much.

He remembers the morning she came to him. She came to him first—not Simon. He was gathered with the others in the room they’d rented just days before. It was morning and he was falling in and out of sleep, half dozing on a blanket in a corner of the room, and she was there. She told him she was going to the tomb. He asked her why. (He still can’t believe he asked her why.)

“Because I am a devout Jew who wishes to follow the law and honor my lord by anointing his body,” she said quickly—so quickly her words seemed both assured and offended. “Are you not coming?”

He was afraid. “I think you should stay.”

“I am not going to stay. The question is if you’re going to come.”

He didn’t move to go with her. He’d sat up to talk to her, but he couldn’t bring himself to rise to his feet to follow her to the door. He watched as she opened the door and closed it, the knife of light disappearing with her.

And that was it, wasn’t it? Of everything he thinks of now, he knows that that moment is his chief regret. He regrets that he didn’t go with her that time. After everything that happened between them later, he was often quick to think, _I should have gone with her._  

The thought is an old anchor, and only when he lets it settle at the bottom of his heart he is able to sleep.


End file.
